Law Commons^™

Anti-Disruption Statutory Construction, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

During his first ten years on the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts has adopted a pragmatic approach to statutory interpretation that appears to place a higher priority on avoiding disruptive consequences than on any particular interpretive methodology. Prepared for the symposium, “Ten Years the Chief: Examining a Decade of John Roberts on the Supreme Court,” at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, this brief essay argues that the Chief Justice’s approach to statutory interpretation exhibits a “Burkean minimalism” that seeks to reduce seismic effect of the Court’s decisions. In particular, the Chief Justice is drawn toward statutory interpretations …